


in a life after death

by heather_in_hell



Category: Heathers (1988), Heathers: The Musical - Murphy & O'Keefe
Genre: AU, Angst, Everyone lives, F/M, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Sexual Content, Mention of guns, cursing, mix of movie and musical plot points
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-01
Updated: 2017-09-01
Packaged: 2018-12-22 15:29:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11970273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heather_in_hell/pseuds/heather_in_hell
Summary: Maybe her death sentence doesn't actually have to result in death after all. Or rather, not in a death so lonely.AU in which JD arrives to Sherwood after the events of the homecoming party and Heather Chandler kept true to her word by ostracizing Veronica.





	in a life after death

**Author's Note:**

> it's September 1st!! (1989, dear diary-)
> 
> did anyone see the promotional material for the tv paramount heathers show? it looks....pretty bad. yeah. not excited.

It’s on JD’s third day at Westerberg that he discovers spending lunch in the quad outside is a great way to avoid jocks giving him the stink eye and kissy faces in the cafeteria (although JD took care of that problem rather quickly by socking their sorry asses into place. Sure, it caused a commotion at his second day at a new school, but he was always for the extreme first impressions.) So, the quad it was. And in finding the quad, he finds a girl.

 

She’s sitting on a concrete block beside a tree covered in half-dead leaves. She’s hunched over a notebook open in her lap and he watches her push her loosely curled hair out of her eyes. His cigarette’s half done and he rarely has any motive to talk to strangers, especially in the many high schools he’s been through over the years. Still, cigarette between his teeth, hands shoved into his pockets, and a strange wave of curiosity coming over him, he's walking toward her.

 

She doesn’t notice him approaching at first, continues writing in her notebook until a tall shadow eases into her line of sight. She looks up, almost looking startled.

 

“Apologies,” JD says without a plan of what the hell he’s doing. “I don’t mean to bug you.”

 

The girl’s wide brown eyes blink and something that resembles vague recognition stirs in her. “Hey, I know you.”

 

“Do you?” He wasn't expecting that response.

 

“Yeah. You’re the guy who beat up Kurt and Ram yesterday.” She pauses, and JD half expects her to reprimand him. Maybe she’s a hippie or a pacifist, believed in that “violence can’t solve problems!” crap. But instead, she smirks.

 

“That was so very,” the girl says. JD cocks an eyebrow.

 

“Um, cool,” the girl corrects. “I meant it was cool.”

 

So she’s not going to lecture him. In fact, she appears to be on his side. “I take it they’re always trying to start fights?” 

 

“You don’t know half of it. They’re assholes. They deserved it.”

 

He nods and she eyes the cigarette between his lips. “So, whereabouts did you come from?”

 

JD blows the smoke out with a short laugh. “Easy to tell I’m new?”

 

“Everyone in this town knows everyone and their dead great-grandmothers,” the girl says. “I know I would’ve recognized you.”

 

“I’m from all over. Name the biggest cities and the most obscure towns in America, I’ve been there.”

 

“I see,” the girl says, wanting to ask more but not eager to pry into a new kid’s backstory so soon. “Um, I’m Veronica, by the way.” She holds out her hand and JD truly has no recollection of the last time he actually shook someone’s hand or even formally introduced himself to another human being who wasn’t a teacher just asking what the new kid’s name was. He reaches out and accepts, her hand small and slender in his own.

 

“I’m Jason Dean,” he replies. “JD for short.”

 

They notice other kids walking back from the parking lot toward the school, signifying lunch being over. Veronica stands, closing the notebook. “Well, I guess I’ll see you around, JD.”

 

JD inhales the remainder of his cigarette and exhales the smoke at the very corner of his mouth, sure not to blow it close to Veronica. “Definitely,” he says, and means it. Her smile back at him is coy.

 

Later, JD lays on his back and stares at the ceiling in his new room, counting the syllables of her name over and over in his head like song lyrics he’s trying to memorize. _Ver-on-i-ca, Ver-on-i-ca, Ver-on-i-ca._

* * *

 

 

No matter how many times a person could say they were used to something, there’s always a small part within that wasn't. Veronica had come to expect judgemental glares from the people at school and she had equally become accustomed to being ignored at the same time.

 

She sees Chandler and McNamara in front of their lockers in the corner of her eye. They stop babbling to each other to stare Veronica down as she walks by them in the hallway. She ignores them, can feel Chandler's eyes boring into her, saying _you deserve this, you’re a prude and a baby, you cross me and you cross yourself._

 

Veronica makes it to the end of the hall in one piece where she’s greeted by a voice. “They don’t seem very friendly.”

 

It’s quite astounding for someone other than Martha or Betty to talk to her in a school setting these days. Not that she’s ungrateful to her friends, but hearing a voice that doesn’t belong to them addressing her openly is quite the deal when you’re a pariah at 17.

 

“That’s an understatement,” Veronica says, letting out a relieved laugh. The tension in her shoulders drop as she steps closer to JD’s tall frame, leaning nonchalantly up against an exit door. It’s the end of the day and the school is slowly filtering out, leaving the halls empty.

 

“Do they give everyone sweet heart eyes like that?” JD asks. He’s heard of them, the Heathers, through hushed gossip and rumours that sounded like people worshipping ancient legends. The Westerberg royalty were nothing special. There were posses of mean girls in every high school across America and each one JD comes across he hates with a burning indifference. They were despicable but predictable in every way, and JD couldn’t care less about them.

 

“Pretty much,” Veronica says. They give each other knowing looks, Veronica’s full of horror stories of having known the Heathers all her life and JD’s one of understanding from seeing hundreds of incarnations of Heathers at every school he’s passed through.

 

They find themselves walking to the nearest 7-Eleven. It's a popular place for bored teens, truckers, and stoners alike to stop for a break, but Veronica’s never met someone who actually enjoys going to a convenience store. She doesn’t know if it should, but it amuses her.

 

They sit on the curb outside with slushies in hand and watch various people pump gas into their vehicles. She drinks a cherry one and he drinks a blue-raspberry. He offers her a sip and she smiles curiously. She would never share her food with someone she just met, and yet she finds it unbelievably and strangely charming for him to do so for her.

 

They go back and forth for a while until their straws make loud slurping noises from the decrease of slushie inside their cups. He tells her about Big Bud Dean and his deconstruction business reluctantly. She tells him of her set in stone plans to escape Sherwood and attend an Ivy League school, somewhere with eloquence and old looking buildings and ultimately far away from home.

 

A Jeep full of jocks sporting Westerberg letterman jackets rolls up into the parking lot somewhere along their conversation. The jocks pour noisily out of the vehicle like a clown car. Veronica lets her hair fall over her face to conceal herself.

 

“What?” JD asks, eyeing the jocks storming into the 7-Eleven.

 

“Nothing,” Veronica mutters. “They’re probably going to a party at Heather Chandler’s or Ram Sweeney’s.”

 

“Which one is Heather Chandler?”

 

“The leader. The mega bitch. The…red one.”

 

“Right,” JD nods, then pauses. “…You know, I’m sensing there’s more with them than what you told me earlier.”

 

Veronica shrugs and tucks her hair behind her ear. JD wonders if it feels as soft as it looks.

 

“I sort of…used to be friends with them?” she phrases it like a question and JD raises his eyebrows. Veronica? Friends with people like the Heathers?

 

“It wasn’t…god, it’s stupid.” She stirs her straw idly in her mostly empty cup. “It wasn’t even for a long time. Shortest lived friendships of my life. It started at the beginning of the school year, so a few weeks or so before you got here. See, I have a knack for faking handwriting. I’m pretty great at it, if I do say so myself,” she grins smugly.

 

“Long story short, the Heathers figure out I can do this thing they can’t do, they want in on it in case of faking doctors notes and permission slip emergencies, and they _make_ me the only Heather without the name Heather,” she says, using emphasis and finger quotes on _make_.

 

JD whistles a _whew_ sound. “Did you have to go around doing that lunch time poll thing I keep seeing?”

 

“And croquet in the backyard, too” Veronica sighs. JD laughs.

 

“So what happened? How’d you escape the cult?” JD asks. He wants to know everything about this girl, but hopes his eagerness isn’t coming off too strong. He knows what people think of him when he arrives at new schools: anti-social weird dark kid who can’t be swayed or bothered, so there’s no point in trying. But somehow, he doesn’t want to be this way with Veronica. He wants her to feel like she can be deconstructed around him.

 

“I wasn’t what they ordered, I guess,” Veronica says with a wry smile, crinkling up her nose. “I guess they didn’t want someone too clean. Or with a semi-functioning conscious.”

 

He can tell there’s more to it than just that. JD’s no master of reading people’s emotions, but he knows when a wound is still fresh.

 

He walks her home that evening despite her telling him ten times that he doesn’t have to. Her house looks exactly the same as all the other houses along her street from the outside, much like every copy-and-paste town JD’s seen.

 

“I don’t think I’ve ever met someone as into the sensation of brain freeze as much as you, Jason Dean,” Veronica says with a flirty grin, making her way up the porch. He likes the way his full name sounds coming out of her mouth. It sounds easy and fun and warm, ways he’s never felt about himself.

“Call me a masochist,” he replies with a wink. He says goodbye from the bottom step of the porch, her at the top. It’s not much distance, but she’s basically the same height as him this way. It makes him smile.

 

JD walks home in silence and wonders if every car that passes him is one on their way to a Westerberg house party. He imagines Veronica crammed in the backseat with the Heathers making their way in fake excitement.

 

* * *

 

 

Seeing a bedroom with this much stuff in it is…disorienting.

 

It’s strange how a room can actually look more spacious with furniture and decorations and clothes on the floor, which Veronica not-so-subtly pushes to the corner of the room with her foot. Her room looks like her: lived-in, eclectic, and adorned in blue. He’s never properly had the chance to be able to settle down in a bedroom and make it look like his. At least, not for several years.

 

“Your window isn’t too far from the ground,” JD notes, looking outside of it. “Mind if I just use this as an entry instead? Dreadful etiquette, I know, but it’s more fun than using the front door.”

 

“Creep.” She crinkles her nose in mock disgust. “Not unless I beat you to it at your place.”

 

Veronica sits on her bed and watches JD observe her room. It’s strange having someone look so interested at an average teenage girl’s bedroom. She feels almost insecure with the natural intensity and mysteriousness he gives off. She’s never had a boy in her room save for the middle school group science projects in which she was assigned partners she didn’t like. But never a boy who makes her stomach flutter, never a _cute_ boy she actually wants to be close to.

 

“Here’s my humble abode,” Veronica says after some silence, not sure what to say next.

 

He sits next to her on the bed and a surge of thrill pulses through her. Here they are, a Friday night with Veronica’s clueless dad out with his golf buddies and her clueless mom having her weekly book club meeting at a friend’s house. It’s every cliché rom-com scenario, and yet, Veronica doesn’t feel the need to roll her eyes and cringe like she normally would. Instead she lets herself stare at the sparse freckles on JD’s face, barely even noticeable but somehow so clear at the same time.

 

“Say,” he says, “you think you would’ve been friends with a guy like me when you rolled with the Heathers?”

 

The immediate reaction in her head is to say _of course I would, it’s not like I sold my soul to them._ But it dawns upon her that she pretty much ditched her true friends for 15 minutes of fame. Not like she wanted to, she would’ve much rather read shitty fashion magazines at a slumber party with Martha and Betty than talk about what colour lip gloss paired best with whatever outfit with the Heathers. Holding Heather Duke’s hair back so she could puke wasn’t exactly the most intellectually challenging or meaningful thing she’s ever done. But it’s what happens when you find yourself caught up with high school royalty – it’s out with the old and in with the new, and if not, it’s off with your pretty little head.

 

“Would you have wanted to be friends with a stuck up bitch?” she poses, turning it back on him.

 

“You’re not a bitch,” he says earnestly, almost looking offended that she would say such a thing.

 

“Yeah,” Veronica laughs dryly and looks down at her feet. “I sort of am.”

 

“Well, you’re by far the nicest bitch I’ve ever met,” he says. The sincerity in the way he says it makes her laugh hard. “I’m serious,” JD says warmly. “You’re the most real thing about this town, Veronica.”

 

He says her name and her laughter simmers down. She can’t mistake the heated look of want in his eyes, makes her want him even more. She bites her bottom lip in contemplation and catches his eyes flicker to it right before she kisses him.

 

He free falls into her without hesitation, not scared of hitting the ground because he knows she’s there to catch him. He cradles the side of her face, interweaves his fingers into her thick hair and swears his hand burns when he touches her. Everything about her in this moment is pure confidence from the firm press of her soft lips on his to her radiant aura that can be felt throughout the room.

 

She pulls back and JD is tempted to chase her mouth with his before she breathes, “was that okay?”

 

He nearly laughs, baffled that she could think he was anything other than so completely into her. “Yeah,” he responds in a gravely voice. He places his arm around her hips and pulls her close. “More than okay.”

 

It surprises him when she wraps her arms around his neck, presses her body fully up against him and drags them back with a lot more force than he thought she was capable of. He lands on top of her and holds himself up on his elbows. She’s already tugging at the hem of his shirt.

 

“What do you want?” JD asks breathlessly in between slow, fervent kisses.

 

Her boldness wavers but doesn’t disappear. “I’ve never…like, done this before. God that sounds corny,” she giggles exasperatedly. “But…I want this as long as you do, too.”

 

He complies, has never been so on board with anything in his life so quickly. They know they’re both thinking the same thing: they hardly know each other, have only spoken over the course of a few days. But JD brings out something wild in Veronica, makes her want to forget about the miserable, insignificant little life she’s built for herself and embrace someone who wants to embrace her. She’s exhilarated by the salacious look in his eyes and JD looks back at her as if to say finally, finally, finally. He can’t exactly pin point what the _finally_ is, wasn't even aware he was searching for something, but he’s pretty damn certain it has all to do with her.

 

Clothes and underwear are strewn on either side of the bed as he drowns himself in her touch and she gives all of herself in to not feeling scared anymore.

 

* * *

 

 

It’s in the time when night transitions into the dark hours of the morning when Veronica says, “I could’ve been a bully.”

 

She’s laying on her side with a sheet wrapped around her body and still basking in a faint afterglow. JD turns his head to her, on his back with one hand tracing along the sensitive skin of her forearm. He waits for her to go on.

 

“I mean, I could’ve really fucked things up, you know?” she says in a soft voice, sounding slightly ashamed. “I shut my real friends out when I was with the Heathers.”

 

“I can’t imagine you being like that,” JD responds. “Clearly, you’ve got a soul, and it seems like so far you’ve done a pretty okay job at keeping it clean.”

 

She smiles, but it’s sad and small. “You didn’t know me before. I kind of wish you did. Maybe you could have kept me from all of it. Or at least offered me some sanity.”

 

“Not sure if ‘sanity’ and my name work well in the same sentence,” he says. Veronica examines him in the semi-darkness of her room, drinks in his peaceful face and dishevelled sex hair and sleepy eyes.

 

“It was at this party that Chandler blew up at me,” she begins, unable to stop herself and not willing to try. “A homecoming party at Ram Sweeney’s. Not that I care about stupid football games and being surrounded by drunk people, but apparently it’s a duty to go to every one of these parties and look happy about it. Kind of like some initiation shit, to prove I can handle it, like I have to keep proving myself over and over to them.

 

“So Chandler wants me to agree to sleep with any guy who wants it because it’s ‘what I’m supposed to do now.’ I’m obviously not okay with it. I’m not just some fucking toy. So I refuse, and she’s pissed at me. And when she’s pissed, they’re all pissed.

 

“Not only that,” Veronica snickers darkly, “but for a perfect grand finale to a perfect night, they want to smash a piñata that looks like my best friend all while she’s  _there_ at the fucking party. I don’t let them, I toss the thing in the pool, and I puke all over Heather’s shoes.”

 

JD can’t help but let out a surprised laugh at this remark.“Red Heather, that is,” Veronica continues. “The leader, meaning my death sentence starts the following Monday. They didn’t want anything to do with me after that night. The whole school knew about it, even the people who weren’t there. I think even a rumour started going around that I _had_ slept with every jock asshole there, and somehow I’m both a slut and a prude. People are so creative with their insults.”

 

She says the last part sarcastically but JD doesn’t laugh this time. He knows Veronica is strong, strong enough to not care about people who’s names she won’t remember in a few short years. But he sees how it hurt her to be on top of the world one moment, willingly or not, to crashing to the ground with no safety net to catch her.

 

He doesn’t know what to say at first. He's never been the best at words of comfort. “I wish I could hurt them for you.”

 

Veronica snorts. “Don’t be silly. The Heathers are made of solid teflon. And besides, I’m done with that short-lived part of my life. I’m just waiting to get out of here.”

 

She looks up at him and smiles tiredly and JD’s heart skips a beat. “I wish I was there,” JD murmurs. “There with you. To make their pathetic asses sorry. You didn’t deserve it, Veronica. You’re better than all of them.”

 

She gingerly plants a kiss on his bare shoulder in a gesture of appreciation. She’s told this story to Martha and Betty, who are on friendly terms with her now. Of course they took her back; they're the only people at Westerberg with hearts and souls. But her short departure into the popular realm left an undeniable trace of awkwardness when they talked or hung out. She’s got no one to blame for that but herself.

 

“You’re tough,” JD tells her. “ _So_ tough. Fuck them.”

 

She takes his hand and presses a kiss to his knuckles. JD hopes it’s dark enough for her not to see him blush.

 

* * *

 

 

Guns being a heavily promoted part of life in American culture doesn't stop Veronica from being surprised the first time she sees one in person, even more so when she sees it in JD’s home.

 

They walk through the already open garage to go inside his house one day after school when she spots it on a raggedy wooden table that’s already begun to collect dust. Perhaps she’s stupid for letting it surprise her that much. Several people in America own guns; probably even tuck them into bed at night given the attitude surrounding them, yet Veronica’s only seen them in movies.

 

“So you just…have one of those?” Veronica says she trails behind him from the kitchen and up the stairs to his bedroom.

 

“Have what?”

 

“A gun.”

 

He shrugs. “Lots of people do. My dad blows shit up for a living, there’s a lot more where that came from.”

 

She knows about his father. On the few times she’s briefly “met” him here and there while at JD’s house, the same twisted, murky feeling settles in the pit of her stomach every time. She does not like Big Bud Dean, doesn’t like the unsettling dynamic with his son or how he talks down to him like he’s nothing.

 

“Still wanna take up my offer on offing the wicked witches and their minions?” he teases with a sinful grin. Veronica slaps his arm.

 

“Hey,” she says firmly, “you’re not funny, jackass.”

 

He rolls his eyes and kisses her cheek. She follows him into his room and wonders if there’s a part of him that means every word of his proposal.

 

* * *

 

 

“Your mom was beautiful.”

 

The words catch him off guard. He looks from where he’s propped against the headboard of his bed at Veronica, dressed only in her underwear and one of JD’s t-shirts which is a tad too long and baggy for her. She’s standing in front of his small bookshelf looking at the few books and miscellaneous items he manages to haul with him every time he moves. He knows she’s looking at the old photograph of his mother and himself when he was a baby.

 

“Snoop much?” he says playfully.

 

“Sorry.” She tears herself away from the photo and moves back to sit cross legged on the bed.

 

“It’s fine,” he says. “She was.”

 

Veronica knows she died long ago before JD hit double digits age wise. She’s always been curious about the woman who never fully got the chance to raise her son. What was she like? Was she anything like JD or, god forbid, JD’s father?

 

“Tell me about her,” Veronica says, but it comes out more like a question, tentative in finding out his reaction. 

 

He stretches his arms above his head and sighs, looking up at the ceiling. “She did most of the raising of me when she was around. Can’t say I have too many fond memories of her and my old man, but of the ones of her and I together…they’re endless. And then one day, while we were living in Kansas, she just walks straight into a building my dad was blowing up two minutes before it was scheduled to happen. She was smart; she knew what she was doing. The last thing I remember about that day is her waving at me through the window of the building and…kaboom.”

 

Veronica physically feels her heart break. She doesn’t want to smother him with pity; she can imagine the cooing and tears from anyone he’s ever told that story to, though she has a hunch that list of people isn’t very long.

 

“I’m so sorry,” she whispers.

 

“Don’t be,” he responds quickly in a curt voice. “It happened a long time ago. Pain gives me clarity. You know?”

 

She nods, not totally understanding what he means but somehow recognizing it anyway.

 

“She would’ve liked you,” he tells her. “She liked all things beautiful and good in the world.”

 

Her eyes go wide, blinking in bewilderment at the knot in her stomach. “This might freak you out,” she says. Her voice reverberates around the room.

 

“Well then, I’m intrigued,” JD replies with a smirk. She stares at him like a dumb deer in headlights. She’s never at a loss for words, always has a witty comeback in her back pocket, but now she can’t think of a clever or funny way to say what she wants to say. So she just says it.

 

“I think I love you,” she tells him. “And it hasn’t even been that long and I sound stupid but-”

 

Before she finishes, he darts across the space between them and locks their lips together, both hands warm and big on either side of her face. Her body goes rigid with surprise, and then the stiffness in her bones melt away as quickly as it came and she’s melding herself into him, her hand placed gently on his ribcage. She thinks she can almost feel his heart beat bouncing along her fingertips.

 

“I love you too,” he whispers against her mouth. “I love you too.”

 

Her relieved smile makes every part of him, from the vast former emptiness in his chest to the hidden corners of his body feel burning and present and alive for the first time in years.

 

* * *

 

 

Not many students are in the quad during their lunch periods. Maybe it's because the weather is getting brisker each day. JD likes to imagine it's because he and Veronica spent so much time there on their lunch and spares that it became their “place” and no one wanted to disrupt the isle of misfit toys; the freaky dark new kid and his moody, socially outcast girlfriend.

Today, however, isn’t a particularly good day to be conversing in the quad. Instead of shit talking the cliques and wannabes and social hierarchy of Westerberg, JD senses she’s mad at him for whatever reason. They’ve bickered before, several times, and never about anything serious.

 

“All I said was, it would be better off if Heather Chandler simply weren’t around anymore,” JD says in a matter-of-fact tone. “Including her mindless followers.”

 

Veronica sighs and takes her time inhaling a long drag of her cigarette, completely unconvinced that any of the teachers would look twice if they caught students smoking on campus. Even when she’s annoyed with him, he can’t help but find her slouched poster and stoic face devastatingly gorgeous, like she could put her cigarette out in his eye and he’d thank her. He almost smiles when she blows the smoke out slowly and dramatically, straight out of a movie scene, but he manages to hold it back since smiling would probably piss her off even more.

 

“I know,” she says. “I’m not entirely disagreeing with you. You just don’t have to be such an asshole about it.”

 

“I’m an asshole all the time,” JD retorts, and Veronica scoffs.

 

“Don’t I know it,” she mumbles.

 

“I’m just kidding, Veronica,” he says, taking a drag of his own cigarette. “It’s only because they hurt you. They treated you like shit-”

 

“I’m not a god, okay?” she snaps. “I’m not special or different and neither are you.”

 

And with that, she throws her cigarette on the ground and walks over it, heading back into the school. JD stares at the squashed cigarette, a thin stream of smoke still rising from it like it’s desperately pushing its way to survival until lunch is over.

 

* * *

 

 

That night, she appears at his window. He isn’t expecting her so he hadn’t left it unlocked like he normally does. He lets her in and she comes stumbling through.

 

“Never gonna stick that landing, huh?” he says, unsure if she’ll think it’s funny right now.

 

“Guess not,” she murmurs. They stand facing each other but do not meet eye to eye. He eventually moves aside to let her more into the room where she drags herself over to his bed and sits down. She looks stressed and a little sheepish with her dark hair matted, half of it thrown up lazily into a bun and her elbows resting on her knees so she’s hunched forward.

 

“Look, I’m sorry I got so bitchy at you today,” she blurts. It’s the last thing JD expects her to say. For a moment there, he feels the nerves crawling up like insects and settling in his throat, fearing a breakup speech.

 

“Okay, well,” she waves her hand as if to clear foggy air in front of her, “I’m not totally sorry. I’m still right about you being an ass.”

 

The corner of his mouth lifts into a suggestion of a smile. “Noted.”

 

She rubs her fingers along her temples. She seems to have trouble articulating what she wants to say, a state JD rarely sees her in in the short time of knowing her and already knowing so much about her.

 

“I just…” she begins. Her eyes move back and forth along the floor, wracking her brain for words to say. It looks slightly manic.

 

“There’s a part of me that really, really doesn’t mind when you say things like that, and I don't like how big that part can get. And the other part of me is pulling at my hair telling me to stop being so stupid, and ‘how could you think those things?’ It scares me.”

 

JD walks slowly to the bed and sits next to her. That incredible night in Veronica’s room not long ago flashes to his mind when they were in the exact same positions, though now JD’s face is full of concern instead of lust.

 

“Are you scared of me?” he asks, unable to look her in the eye when he says it.

 

“No,” she says, shaking her head. “No, JD.”

 

She sees his shoulders go lax and his eyelids flutter at the reassurance.

 

“I’m more scared of myself when I get to those places,” she admits. She looks so small and JD wants to bundle her up in his arms and never let go. She lays back on his bed and looks straight up at the ceiling.

 

“It’s like, I want to believe I’m something of a good person. But I’ve never proved that,” she says. “I’m not as nice of a person as Betty or Martha. I’d never smile at random people on the street or befriend the kids who’re like me – post-Heathers me – at all. And part of me thinks everyone has some goodness in them, but I keep being proven wrong over and over on that.”

 

He looks at her for a long time before moving to lie down half on top of her, careful not to press her with his weight. He lays his head on her stomach and wraps his arms around her waist, encircling her completely. She hums sweetly and runs her fingers through his hair. It sends tingles down his spine.

 

“You could be the spawn of Satan and still be better at being a decent person than this whole town." His voice sends light vibrations through Veronica’s body from where he speaks into her ribs through her thin sweater. “I can be an asshole for the both of us majority of the time. You can work part-time.”

 

She giggles and the sound makes his heart throb. Since when did he become such a sap?

 

“I can’t say I don’t agree with you when you make jokes about offing Heather and Kurt and Ram and every other asshole at school,” she tells him. “I _would_ be happier if they simply ceased to exist. I think a lot of people would be. But like I said, I – we’re not gods. I’m pretty sure we’re just shitty teenagers with bad judgement and questionable morals.”

 

JD lifts his head and their eyes properly meet for the first time that night. He lowers his face and kisses her collarbone. He doesn’t have a witty response, just welcomes the pleasant silence and lets his lips linger on her skin.

 

* * *

 

 

Halloween means marathons of horror movies on repeat all day, and while getting wasted at a Halloween house party seems “oh so thrilling” as Veronica puts it in straight dead pan, binging _Friday the 13 th_ movies is much more appealing. They turn the lights off and draw the curtains so no kids disturb them, though some ring the doorbell anyway, to which JD and Veronica both ignore. Plus, JD insists on it since “you can’t watch scary movies with the lights on.”

 

She briefly wonders if the Heathers are at a Remington party right now all dressed as some variation of a cat, probably talking shit about Veronica to the jocks about how they’re “so glad they dropped her, she was such a bore.” She knows they can’t let it go, knows they’ll most likely always continue to sneer at her in the halls and whisper when she walks by for the rest of her days in high school. And she also knows that she’s well on her way to not caring about it anymore.

 

A machete pierces through a body paired with the screeching of violins on screen. JD’s arm tightens around her at the exact moment and shouts, “Oh my god!” causing Veronica to jump.

 

“Fuck you!” she tries to sound stern but a laugh escapes her anyway. She shoves him away from her and begins lightly punching his arm.

 

“Ow!” he wails exaggeratedly.

 

“Poor baby,” she pouts. He leans in and catches her jutted bottom lip between his own.

 

“Ew, you want to get freaky to Jason murdering teenagers?” she speaks against his mouth. “You’re into weird shit.”

 

“I’m just trying to be chivalrous and distract you from the movie since you’re so _scared,_ ” he teases.

 

“JD, there are children around.”

 

He laughs and rests his head on her shoulder. They watch the bloodbath play out on her living room television, alone on a night meant for drinking and partying until you forget your name in high school land, and Veronica thinks her death sentence isn't so completely horrible, that she could never be revived or mended from her public execution but rather burned to ash and buried as the ghost version of herself reads the eulogy. She often fantasises about death, not so much in a genuine suicidal way but more of a _what if this was over?_ kind of way. It’s easy to allow her mind to wander to those places when high school is constantly shoved down her throat as being the best four years of her life.

 

She looks down at the boy nestled in the crook of her neck and decides she can stick out this high school thing a little longer.

 

**Author's Note:**

> this idea's been buzzing around in my head all summer. i've always wondered what would've happened if chandler had followed through on shunning veronica and if jd hadn't been there to witness it. because i think chandler drinking the drano is what launched jd into wanting to commit more murders, i wanted to explore the idea of him not being directly involved in heather and veronica's drama and instead only see the aftermath of it. i still wanted to be as true to his character as possible, but i think veronica just wanting to move past the incident and no longer associate herself with popularity once the damage has been done would've made jd and veronica's relationship a little less chaotic.


End file.
